Leslie Berestein Rojas

Immigration and Emerging Communities Reporter

Southern California is home to many new immigrants -- about a third of L.A. County residents are foreign born. Immigrants are creating an evolving definition of "American." I will deepen the understanding of how immigrants are changing the region and how L.A. changes immigrants.

Earlier this month, I linked to a story out of Texas about a guard from an immigration detention facility being arrested for allegedly fondling female detainees. The only unusual thing about it was that he was arrested; the type of allegations made were not.

This afternoon's Patt Morrison show on 89.3 KPCC will be examining the process of becoming a U.S. citizen: how long it takes, how expensive it is, and what it takes for immigrants to navigate a complicated legal system.

"Why should Pennsylvania ... become a Colony of aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us, instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?"

So while I was driving this afternoon, I missed the start of biggest national crime story so far today, an armed hostage crisis at the Discovery Channel headquarters in Silver Spring, Maryland that ended with the gunman killed during a stand-off with police.

I promise that I won't post any more reports after this, but one released today by the Center for American Progress is pretty interesting. It's a report on immigrant assimilation that points to key benchmarks being met by relatively new immigrants.

The Pew Hispanic Center has a new report out today that crystallizes what U.S. Border Patrol arrest statistics have been indicating for the past few years: The number of undocumented immigrants entering the United States has dropped off sharply, reduced by nearly two-thirds over the past decade.

The other night, while I was visiting with a few comadres, the talk turned to Ciudad Juarez. One woman had just seen the film "Backyard," a Mexican feature based on the hundreds of unsolved murders of women, many of them factory workers, in the border city.